Perfect Timing by Jill Mansell Page A

Dunbar.
    But Mervyn, who loved his wife, sensed that if he kicked up a fuss he would only lose her. Electing to sit it out and pray that nature would run its course, he grimly feigned ignorance instead.
    Six weeks later, as the summer season was drawing to a close, Alex Fitzpatrick’s wife was watering a hanging basket when she fell off a stepladder and broke her leg in three places.
    Alex explained to a devastated Laura that he had to go back to London. His contract at Ash Hill was pretty much up anyway, and now his old lady needed him. They’d had a laugh, hadn’t they? They’d had a great summer together but now it was time to move on. She had a husband; he had a wife. Of course he’d loved Laura, but this was how things were. No need to get all dramatic over a bit of harmless fun.
    Laura was devastated but she had her pride. To be fair to Alex, he had never talked about leaving his wife; she had just hoped he might.
    Hiding her true feelings, refusing to cry in front of him, Laura kissed Alex good-bye. When she discovered three weeks later that she was pregnant she knew at once who was the father. She had been far too busy making love with Alex to have any energy left for Mervyn.
    Mervyn, who wasn’t stupid, was equally aware of whose baby it was. When he’d wanted nature to take its course he hadn’t meant in this fashion.
    But at least he had his wife back, which was what Mervyn wanted most of all. He also privately suspected that he might not be able to father children of his own as a result of a nasty attack of teenage mumps. Maybe in time, he decided, he would be able to forget who the biological father of this child really was. Maybe he would learn to love it as if it were his own.
    Poppy knew all this because her mother had confided as much in her small circle of friends, one of whom had been Margaret McBride. Pride had prevented Laura from ever contacting Alex Fitzpatrick to let him know she was carrying his baby. Instead, she had immersed herself in the business of becoming a born-again good wife.
    When Poppy had been born Mervyn had, in turn, tried his hardest to experience true fatherly feelings. The trouble was, they hadn’t been there. And he had been unable to summon up any.
    But the secret of Poppy’s parentage had been kept, from herself if from no one else, and her mother’s tragic death had only compounded people’s determination to preserve it. To lose one parent was terrible enough, they whispered to each other. Imagine the effect it could have on a vulnerable twelve-year-old to discover that the one you had left wasn’t a real parent at all.
    If only they’d known, Poppy thought ruefully, how glad I would have been to find out.
    But it was time now to go into action. She had waited long enough. Since she’d moved to London, wondering who her real father might be had knocked everything else out of her mind—even Tom. The sooner the noisy Australian from the basement flat stopped yakking to every friend he’d ever had and got off the communal pay phone, the sooner she could make a start.
    When he had at last finished, Poppy ran downstairs and bagged the phone, kneeling on the dusty floor with her list of A. Fitzpatricks in one hand and a pile of twenty-pence coins in the other. Her heart pounded against her ribs as she began to dial. Imagine, within seconds she could actually be speaking to her father…
    Each time the phone was picked up at the other end, Poppy asked in a businesslike voice to speak to Alex Fitzpatrick. Ten minutes later she was three-quarters of the way through her list, having got through to an assortment of Alans, Alistairs, Alisons, and Andrews… even an Ahmed.
    Then she struck lucky.
    â€˜Alex?’ said a middle-aged sounding woman. ‘I’m sorry, you’ve just missed him. May I take a message?’
    Poppy gulped. This really could be it.
    â€˜Um… maybe I’ll try again later. What